Farewell to the Exercise Explorer
Some of the Ironwood Family Practice staff who participated in the September Movement Challenge. From Left to Right: Debbie Cohen, Alanna Dowies, Kirsten Anderson, Doreen Krause, Joelene Creech, Amber Tatman, Dr. Geoff Emry, Tara Avriett, Catherine Buck, Dr. Justin Thompson, Melissa Zahnow, Dr. Leah Weatherly, Helen Webster and Jennifer Hamelin.
Photo courtesy Dr. Geoff Emry
When I first pitched the idea to the Coeur d’Alene Press of writing a series of articles to promote exercise and fitness options here in North Idaho, I had no idea where it would take me.
Over the last year of trying new things from hot yoga to jiu jitsu to figure skating, I’ve learned so much and had tons of fun along the way. While I haven’t covered every sport or activity (sorry to those still waiting for the article on open water swimming), I’ve written about most of the exercise options that are widely accessible here, which is why I’m concluding this series rather than resorting to writing about less accessible activities like water skiing for fitness or the workout you get from reeling in a marlin (much to my brother-in-law’s disappointment).
The goal behind covering a wide variety of exercise options and encouraging you to try something new has been to inspire you to get off the couch and just do something. It’s been less about which specific type of exercise is best and more about promoting exercise in any form. Any exercise will do. Just keep moving. Medically speaking, the argument for exercise is quite clear.
As Peter Attia put it in his book "Outlive, The Science and Art of Longevity," “Going from zero weekly exercise to just 90 minutes per week can reduce your risk of dying from all causes by 14%. It's very hard to find a drug that can do that.”
So, in this, my final article, it’s fitting that I’m not focusing on a specific type of exercise but rather a recent movement challenge we held at Ironwood Family Practice. My colleague, Dr. Justin Thompson, organized the monthlong challenge as a fun way to promote exercise of any variety. As he put it, “We challenge our patients to move their bodies, as it is an important component of preventative care. Now let's prove we practice what we preach and accomplish a team movement challenge.”
The idea is simple. Anyone in our office who’s interested and willing to track their workouts for a month signed up. We all joined a group on Strava and logged our workouts on the Strava app. The goal was to do 30 minutes per day per person or 210 minutes per week. We ended up having 26 people sign up, which meant that we had a team goal of 390 hours for the month of September. I’m happy to say we achieved our goal. It was close there at the end, but luckily Dr. Thompson organized a team hike (forced march?) last Saturday which got us over the finish line.
If you’re curious why Dr. Thompson chose 30 minutes per day as our goal, I highly recommend you stop reading this right now and watch this short 9-minute video on the medical benefits of exercising 30 minutes per day: youtu.be/aUaInS6HIGo?feature=shared (and then please come back and finish this article).
Not only did we achieve our movement goal, but it was easy to participate and fun to do. It was motivating to see what others in our office were doing (who knew that Rachel in our front office was such a beast?) And this is something anyone can do — you can be the one to set this up at your office to motivate yourself and your colleagues to get moving. This was our first attempt at an office-wide movement challenge but we’re already looking forward to doing it again sometime. And next time, I’m going to see if I can exercise more than Rachel.
THE GOOD: “Study after study has found that regular exercisers live as much as a decade longer than sedentary people” according to Peter Attia. And he goes on to say, “For those who are not habitual exercisers (yet), you're in luck: The benefits of exercise begin with any amount of activity north of zero — even brisk walking — and go up from there.”
THE BAD: Trying new forms of exercise can be hard at first but you’ll never find your new favorite fitness passion if you don’t give it a try.
THE NITTY GRITTY: It really doesn’t matter what type of exercise you choose as long as you’re exercising. So farewell from the Exercise Explorer MD — stay open to new adventures and exercise on!
• • •
Dr. Emry is a family physician and partner at Ironwood Family Practice in Coeur d’Alene. Exercise Explorer MD appeared every other week in The Press and Dr. Emry can be contacted via email exercisexplorermd@gmail.com. © 2024. This work is licensed under a CC BY-ND 4.0 license.